Talk:Doom Damage/@comment-220.233.167.179-20191205220302/@comment-1333593-20191207214321
I don't know about you guys, but by the time I typically have a geared Demi-God Warrax I've long won the game and am just playing to satisfy my OCDs. But lets put that aside for a moment. The Chaos Item Power does two things. First, it halves the Hero's Attack Strength, and then it disables the opponent's Defense Rolls. The former is a penalty that gets stronger the higher the Hero's original score is, while the latter scales not mainly with the amount of Defense dice, but with the amount of actual rolls. A max level Hero versus a single figure unit, even if it's one with an immunity, is essentially the worst case scenario for this power, so stating that Chaos is bad because it doesn't perform very well in this exact scenario is a rather unconvincing argument. If we do want to stick to the Demi-God Warrax, then his opponents should be something more appropriate, like Champion Paladins instead of Sky Drakes. But wait, he can't even kill two figures of those with a shot without Chaos or Phantasmal. The latter, by the way, is probably not very good to compare against either, considering that it takes 6 Chaos and 6 Sorcery books to be able to enchant both, which is the only case where one would have to choose which one to craft once the game is already underway. If maximum Attack and Flaming are a given, then only To Hit, Lightning, Defense, Spell Skill, -Spell Save, and Destruction have merit here (in case of a staff), or perhaps lesser powers from other Realms that may commonly be available to a crafter of a Chaos weapon. But an even better comparison would be ditching the Attack and the Flaming, and seeing what can be gotten from the same 2k that Chaos costs. For instance, if Sky Drakes are insisted on, then the attacker could have a more realistic 20 Attack Strength and +2 To Hit without the weapon. In this setup, with a 2k budget, Chaos beats everything, and even with the +9 from max Attack and Flaming, it will result in more damage than the alternatives. Also, unless the Hero can 1-shot the Drake, whether they do 13 or 24 damage per shot is largely irrelevant. What matters is how many total shots it takes, and these two values, as well as anything inbetween, will result in an average two shots required per Sky Drake. Of course, this ignores the scenario when there's a Thrown Hero around who is supposed to finish off the creatures, but that only works if they either have enough attacks, or can separate the Drakes far enough apart to not get slaughtered by the rest. For me, the two issues with the Chaos power would be its cost, and the fact that for max level Heroes, I'd likely want to craft another weapon eventually to replace the Chaos one with. But regardless, Chaos can perform quite well for lower level Heroes, especially if they are going up against multi-figure units, with mundane Halflings being an obvious prime example - although even things like Skeletons can be bad for a Ranged Missile Hero without a Chaos bow. And there's also the issue of enemy spells: either those that grant an immunity or, more notably, Invulnerability, which even Illusion can't bypass. I often have low level Heroes quite late into the game, and while I don't generally craft Chaos weapons for them, I can easily imagine multiple scenarios where I would. More importantly though, if I find one that they can use, I will probably equip it instead of creating a custom weapon right off the bat. Unfortunately, I've edited my item data file back in the DOS days and have been using that ever since, so I actually don't have that much experience with the default item set, and because there are barely any Chaos weapons in my own set, I almost never find a usable one.